Derogatory

By Gonzalo Duque

WELCOME to Dagupan and Pangasinan, Dr. Lucio Tan.

        The famous  Chinese business mogul and philanthropist is in town, thanks to the collective efforts of Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, our old friend George Cham and  other personal friends for helping us to extend our invitation to a humble but superlatively successful man. The business titan will be conferred a doctorate degree in honoris causa in humanities by the Lyceum Northwestern University on April l9, the first, we believe, he will receive outside Metro Manila.

        It’s really about time we honor such a man, don’t you think so? Mabuhay ka, Dr. Lucio Tan. And thank you for honoring our invitation.
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The lure of homeland

By Al S. Mendoza

MANY balikbayans are now looking for homes they say they’ll need when they retire and return for good to their country of origin.

Some prefer condos, others townhouses.

A few of my balikbayan-friends say they like lots where they can build a house and a vegetable garden and a mini orchard.

“I miss our vegetables, like ampalaya, camote, patola, eggplant, okra, allocon and saluyot,” said one of them, who’s been living in

       New York City for the last 20 years or so.

The condo- and townhouse-seekers are doing their home-hunting in the metropolis, targeting Makati and Quezon City.
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Biogas Generation and Durabloom Production at Wellisa Farms

By Sosimo Ma. Pablico

THE PHILIPPINES won’t have much problem with methane gas emission if poultry and swine farms have their own biogas digesters for swine and use the sludge together with the poultry manure for the production of bio-organic fertilizer. Just like what Wellisa Farms in Bantayan Island and Consolacion Cebu is doing.

Owned and managed by a relatively young Chinoy, Wellington Chanlim, Wellisa Farms is a franchisee of Novatech Agri-Food Industries whose main processing plant is in Sta. Ignacia, Tarlac. As one of the franchisees of Novatech, Wellisa Farms also produces the bio-organic fertilizer Durabloom. This fertilizer is now making waves in Mindanao, as users spread the word about its effectiveness in corn, rice, sugarcane, and fruit crops.
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Conscience

By +Oscar V. Cruz D. D.

In general, conscience is the judgment of sound and right reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of an act that the same is about to do, will do or have done. In particular, moral conscience that is present in the heart of every thinking feeling person, enjoins at the right time, in the proper occasion, to do good and to avoid evil. While usually unsaid in these “modern times”, conscience on the licit or illicit judgments, on the morality or immorality of human acts, can be categorized in the following contrast pairings.
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Sportsfest in Bangus Festival

By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.

NO doubt that the city of Dagupan is the bangus capital of the world. Our government officials, then and now, are doing their utmost to promote this milkfish worldwide.

The city government even tried and was successful in breaking the world’s longest grill in 2004 for the Guinness Book of World Records until it was surpassed recently.

According to Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, this year’s chairperson for the Bangus Festival, the event will officially open on April 16 at 1:00 p.m. through the Gilon-Gilon ed Baley and the annual street dancing competition to be held at M.H. del Pilar street and A.B. Fernandez avenue, respectively.
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Between here and there . . . (part 4)

By Emmanuelle

. . . one stumbles upon heaven and hell on earth.

      Manta graduates from one of the country’s most exclusive colleges, specializing in music and mathematics for kids. Aside from being adjudged by her mentors as a most innovative instructor in elementary math, she would encore on stage as piano and marimba soloist, a sometime flutist, and a jazz ballet experimentalist. With a bow and a flourish, she would flow in fluid harmonic motion from one discipline to the others. She is her worth in full measure with an octave to spare.

      Full-pledged and all grown-up, not anymore a child, she rushes home and to him, refrains of their voices in her ears. I wait for you. Uhuh. I rush. 

      Lo, behold, alas. He now shares his home with a woman of his age, Manta holds her breath. Chuck can almost see her heart stop in mid-beat. What have I done? He grasps those cold, colder, freezing hands. He tells her to breathe their beat, to let the lead strings find its way through the thundering drums. He bends his head to hold steady those big brown eyes gone cloudy, misty.
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SINCE NERI WON’T TALK

Cruz: Mass-forum was good

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

IF CHED chair Romulo Neri continues to invoke executive privilege and won’t answer crucial questions about President Gloria Arroyo’s instructions and reactions regarding the national broadband deal, Engr. Jun Lozada will provide the answers.

This was the assurance he gave to the national and local media during the press conference organized by Archbishop Oscar Cruz upon Lozada’s arrival.

Lozada said he’s willing to finally tell the senate what Neri confided to him were the statements and reactions of President Arroyo when the former reported the bribe scenario to the latter.

“If the Senate will accept my statement, I would tell them the truth,” he said.
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BEFORE whistle-blower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada and his entourage of volunteers and nuns arrived in Dagupan City late Friday morning, the counsel of former Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos has already pitched camp in the city earlier meeting with allies of the Arroyo government.

“Wherever Lozada goes, I will be there to tell the truth and dispute the lies he’s spreading, lawyer Salvador Panelo told the PUNCH.

“I will be his conscience,” he intoned.

He cited a litany of lies he claims being peddled by Lozada, among which was the claimed that Abalos threatened to kill him.
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LINGAYEN— Believe us…there is no shortage in the province.

This assurance is oft- repeated by the National Food Authority’s (NFA) local office in the face of fears of rice shortage across the country.

Edilberto Libatique, manager of the NFA office here, said there are 88,000 bags at 50 kilograms each at their four warehouses.

Another 25,000 to 60,000 bags Vietnam rice allocated to the Pangasinan NFA will be unloaded at the Poro Point in La Union over the weekend.

“There’s nothing to worry about. There’s no shortage only higher price of commercial rice,” Libatique told The PUNCH.
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SOME 100 owners of picnic sheds at Tondaligan Park have been given by the city government another grace period to settle their arrears in business taxes amounting to P1.7 million as of February 2008.

City Engineer Virginia Rosario said Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. himself set the new grace period after the delinquent stallholders reneged on their promise to pay their arrears on March 15.

The new deadline was set after Fernandez vetoed Ordinance No. 1914-2008 passed by the city council providing for the condonation of penalties, interest and surcharges on the principal accounts of individual shed owners. The council did not override the veto.
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